How to Start a Dog Walking Business: a Step-by-Step Guide

So if you run a dog training or dog walking business, then this episode of Fix Your Business is definitely going to be for you. We'll be talking about how to potentially double your turnover in your business within the shortest space of time as possible. So on Fix Your Business today, I've got Rachel Cathorne, and I have to be careful because I did pronounce the name wrong earlier on. So I'll remember that. So Rachel runs a successful dog walking and training business that's just over 1 year old. So welcome to the show, Rachel.

Thank you.

Excellent. So we're going to be digging into your, into your business, obviously, and giving you a bit of advice about kind of how you productize dog walking and dog training, package it up, and hopefully sell it for more than what you're currently selling it at. And I've already talked off, off air about some of kind of the, the stories and beliefs and patterns that you're already starting to kind of using that are stopping you from growing your business. So, but for the benefit of the viewers, why don't you just give us a quick sort of potted history about how you came to setting up the business in the first place?

So I always volunteered as a dog trainer, and it got to a stage, the normal, you hate your job, you think, no, I want to change my career. So yeah, last year I decided to start up my own business, Rach's Rambles. I already had lots of people coming to me asking for dog help, and But I just did it on this, like, for free for friends. Yeah, and so far so good. It's been successful. I've had clients from day one, lots of recommendations, in touch with other dog walkers in the area and dog trainers. But now I feel I've just got to the point where it's— I have the same income every month and it's great. It's fine because I never thought I'd be at this point anyway. But, you know, You want to earn more, you want to grow your business, and I want to grow it in a way that I'm not exhausting myself. I'm doing it the smarter way.

That's it. So we had kind of a brief sort of discussion about what your capacity was at currently, because kind of— so one of the first questions I asked you was, you know, do you have capacity to take on more clients at the moment? And your answer was?

Yes.

And then we talked about, okay, so what does your average day look like? You know, how much time would you Say you've got spare? And the answer for that was—

Not at all.

Not at all. This is obviously quite a common sort of dilemma or quandary, which a lot of, especially in sort of the dog walking, dog training industries, is that we kind of fool ourselves into thinking that the only way to grow our business is to get more clients. But then actually, when we look at it, we don't have the time to service more clients. So for you at the moment, it's like, you know, your earnings capacity at the moment is kind of capped by your ability to be able to deliver more training workshops and things like that.

Yeah.

One of the other things, so we were running through kind of the pricing of your sort of programs, and I'm just going to jump onto a screen share momentarily because this is quite important, I feel. So these are my notes. So hopefully you can read them. Hopefully the viewers will be able to sort of translate them as well. So a couple of things that she mentioned at the start were about sort of marketing. Can we get more clients? We've kind of just spoken about that very briefly. But, you know, how do I say no to people as well? It sounds Like you're taking on work for the sake of taking on work because there's this driver to get more money. But then we were looking at the pricing which you're currently charging. So you charge £10 for a group walk and then £8 for a 30-minute solo walk. And then you have group classes and group training running at the moment, which is £80 for 6 sessions or 6 weeks. And then your one-to-one is £25 for a half hour.

Mm-hmm.

And £45 for a full hour. And obviously one of the things which you're doing at the moment is you're selling your consultations at your hourly rate.

Yes.

Which, just walk us through, what's the process around kind of putting together a consultation with a client?

So the person contacts me, it's usually through social media, to be fair. That's quite a lot where I get a lot of my business from. I book in a discovery call so we can talk to them and discuss their training needs. Like, what is it? Is it something they exactly want to pinpoint or a behavior they're struggling with? And then from there, we book in a one-to-one session. They get some feedback notes and things like that. And then I say to them whether they need— this is a bit more of a serious problem than just one hour. You know, you might need some more support. And that's where we potentially look into more training sessions. But to be honest, me as a business owner, if you like, that is where I get stuck and I struggle to sell myself and go, oh, well, you need to book 6 sessions, because I'm always like, oh my God, are they going to buy 6 sessions? They're just going to want 2 and they're not going to want 6 off me. And then I've just got 6 weeks and what the hell do I—

Yeah.

So that's what goes through my mind a bit.

So let's try and break it down a little bit. So we'll deal with the consultation side of it first, and then we'll look at how you go about selling a follow-up package afterwards. So the initial consultation, so it sounds like it's not just 1 hour of your time. It's like you've got to show up, like drive there. You've got to deliver the consultation. You've got some notes to write up afterwards, obviously drive home as well. Potentially there might be a follow-up call where then you might sell them something else. They've already had a 15-minute call to start off with.

Uh-huh.

You start— that sounds like several hours work. So actually your hourly rate's more like sort of It's not £45 for an hour, it's £10 an hour or something like that, or, you know, best case £15 an hour.

Yeah.

And what you might find is then also by the time you start to factor in things like, well, travel generally, but also doing marketing and sales and all of the other bits of business, your bookkeeping and etc., etc., actually, if you worked out what your hourly rate is, you'd probably be like, it's like £6 an hour or something.

Yeah.

Go and earn more money working in Waitrose.

Yeah.

It'd be a bit disappointing. So we've got to start to create a business model that is going to work better for your business. Okay, so your target monthly turnover was $2K.

Yep.

Right, so go back to my screen share. So we start off, we always start off with our goal in mind and then we work backwards from that. Okay, so because otherwise what happens is, well, this is what most business owners do, they go about their sort of daily life with their business, doing all of these random sort of tasks with no real sense of direction. And, you know, it ends up just being like you'll just be jumping around, like, you know, going from one thing to the next, no real sense of direction, get to the end of the day and think, I've collected some money, that's okay, that'll do. There's no real, like, idea. You haven't kind of got a concrete, like, purpose when you wake up in the morning, basically.

Yeah.

And this is perfectly normal. This is what a lot of business owners do. The one mistake which they do make at this point is they don't look at these tasks each month and go, actually, was it worthwhile doing that task? If it wasn't, then I shouldn't, I shouldn't have done it, and I certainly shouldn't do it moving forward. And so what you start to see is then you've got these tasks which then are more specific and are going to push you towards your goal quicker. Because you're doing fewer things. So it's like, you know, if you put 12.5% of your energy into 8 things, are any of those 8 things going to work out? Probably not, because you're only putting a fraction of the energy in. So the more energy we can give specific tasks, the better. So what we want to do though is we want to have in mind your goal, which is initially £2,000 a month, and it could potentially be £5K a month or even £10K a month potentially longer term. But let's hit £2K first and then we can start to kind of grow it from there. So at the moment with that, you know, if you're earning like £10 an hour, well, there's only 200 hours a month generally when you can work. If you work on the basis of 9 to 5, Monday to Friday, it's like 200 hours. So you're already kind of— even if you were at like full capacity earning that money every single hour that you're at work, we've already established you're not. So we've got to design a business that is going to sort of start to get you there a little bit quicker. So Essentially, business kind of works in a number of different ways. So down at the bottom here, you'll have like—

there'll be—

so somebody messages you on Facebook and says, hey, I've seen your page. I see you do dog walking. Or maybe they've been referred to you. Can you help us out? You know, Fido's playing up. Or, you know, we can't— we've got to go back to work. Fido needs a walk. So then you'll reply to it. And quite often people will give them the price at this point. Without any education, and then you'll never hear from them again. Okay, so do you do that?

I try not to, because honestly, from what you have said before, a few videos that I've watched, I give them a bit of an insight as to what my walks are about, um, or what my training is about and my methods and stuff like that, and then see if they respond. And then when they do, they— I kind of ignore the question. If they go, and how much is it, I go more into This is what I do. And then usually by the second message, I've told them. Great.

Well, you still shouldn't give them the price on there because one of the things which you have got, and I can't remember what you've called it, but you've got that initial sort of call, 15-minute call.

Consultation call. Yeah.

So you've got the 15-minute consult call where you're then going to book them onto a consultation. And eventually what's going to happen is you're going to sell them a package. Okay?

Uh-huh.

So we've got this now, a bit of a customer journey designed for you. And if you start giving people the price, you know, at the wrong step, it's going to break this and you're not going to be able to kind of move them up through the scales of initiative. And also, like, whilst you're selling, you know, so we have the consultation. So you're currently selling it at £45 for an hour. I've worked with dog trainers, dog behaviorists who are selling those initial consultations. So they, they have a very specific target market. So they'll be breed specific. So they know the dogs inside and out and their problems and challenges. And then they've got a very specific solution, you know, to that, to whatever problems it is that they're exhibiting. So they'll charge in excess of like £500. I know some dog trainers will be charging £850 for just a consultation phase of their process. Now, it's not just an hour time block that they're selling at £850. They stack a lot of value in there. So they'll have maybe several follow-ups. They'll have a bit of remote support. They'll have a much more in-depth report which they give to them and various other things like that before they then move them onto the package. But it's super specific in terms of market and product which they're selling. So think about it this way. You've got to find 20 clients to sell a consultation to. for every one that they sell their consultation to.

Yeah.

One of the challenges which you mentioned to me was this about, can I say no to people? Okay, so that person has learned to say no to 19 people in order to get the one perfect client who they can help. And all day long they're getting inquiries, you know, a dachshund owner— oh, sorry, a dachshund specialist is getting inquiries from lurchers and Labrador dog owners, or people who don't have— maybe they've got Maybe they're a behaviorist, you know, specialist in separation anxiety. And so they don't take on necessarily the lower sort of level stresses and anxieties that the dogs have. They're super specific in terms of what they're doing. So they can afford to say no to the 19 people who don't fit the market or product niche.

Yeah.

For that one perfect client. What's your— what sort of feelings are coming up when I say to you that you could say no and turn down a client?

My first thing is, is probably finding my niche. Like, you know, you said like there's the lady who does dachshunds or separation anxiety and things like that. I do find a lot of Staffie owners come to me and Lurcher owners because I own one of them myself. I own a Staff and a Lurcher. So I get a lot of inquiries from them, maybe because I can be really relatable, I guess. But yeah, I don't suppose I've got a A niche. Mine's more just, I suppose, maybe pet dog training. But yeah, I'm not a specialist in any area, if you like. I'm just a general pet dog owner trainer.

Imagine if there's a Staffie dog owner out there and you're putting out content marketing-wise all of the time, which is talking about Staffies. Do you think that that content is going to speak to that dog owner?

Yes.

Yeah, most people's concern or fear is that there's not enough Staffie dog owners out there to, you know, for there to be enough custom out there in order to, you know, satisfy their business, basically. So, but actually, I bet if you look at it, there's probably hundreds or thousands of Staffie owners. You're based down in sort of Essex, which is pretty well populated, southeast of the UK. You know, there's thousands of people out there with Staffies.

Yeah, yeah, I do see a lot on my walks around the town.

Yeah, and not only that, but now you're an expert in Staffies. There'll be people up in Liverpool who will see your YouTube videos about Staffies and go, well, we can't travel down to see you, but can we do a session on Zoom, or can we just have a consultation with you? And now, because you're an expert, you've positioned yourself as an expert, you know, now all of a sudden, if you're selling a consultation for £250, because that person's desperate to work with you, You know, it's like, well, that's 5 times the value right there.

Yeah.

Which, you know, what's the difference though? What's changed? Not a lot. It's just what we call your ability to articulate your value.

Yeah.

If you're there saying, I'm an expert in staffies and lurchers, and all lurchers, but let's just stick with staffies. I'm an expert in staffies. I only work with staffie dogs. You'll get people from all over the world. Like, you know, my friend who runs the Dashan training business, she's got clients all over the world.

Yeah, I guess it's slightly nervous to say that I'm an expert in the area. That could, you know, be self-doubt almost.

Okay, that's interesting. But, but how many— so how many staffies have you worked with?

Probably about 5 or 6 since starting my business last year.

Training-wise.

Did you—

how many of them did you get good results with?

All of them.

So there's your evidence.

Yeah.

Yep. So fear comes from this whole thing of things being much worse in imagination than they are in reality.

Yeah.

We will search out, like, in reality for things to back up the stories that we tell ourselves. So if we start saying, I'm not an expert, we'll go out and look for evidence that backs up with, we're not an expert. And you actually have to just stop that, like to say, actually, I'm going to go out and look for evidence that is the opposite of that.

Okay.

So that simple exercise which I did with you is how many Staffies you've worked with, how many have you managed to help? All of them. Yeah, you're an expert in Staffies. You know, some people could define it by how many qualifications you've got and all this sort of stuff. But ultimately, if you can get the desired result and outcome, which is to stop Staffies from being aggressive towards other dogs, Yep, and you can do that consistently, that makes you an expert in my opinion.

Okay.

So we go out and gather evidence to back up the message that we're starting to put out. So it's about specificity. But going back to my little diagram here. So now all of a sudden, if you're, you know, we'll scratch you doing— we're no longer going to be doing £45 an hour consultations. So Your consultation won't just jump to £250, right?

Yeah.

It's a process of testing and validating, test and validate. So what I would suggest is your consultation price needs to go up to— well, let's play a game, actually. So tell me at what point— I'm going to start increasing the numbers— tell me at what point it starts to get uncomfortable. Okay, so £60, £75, £90, £120.

Probably there.

Okay, so that's the price you need to go for with your consultations.

Okay.

So we'll— we're gonna scratch that. We're gonna now sell our consultations for £120. Okay, which is nearly 3 times the price of what you were selling them at currently. And what's gonna happen is I'm gonna challenge you to pitch the next 10 to 20 people who come along who want to work with you You're going to pitch them a consultation at £120.

Okay.

Now, I can guarantee that your conversion rate will be somewhere between 1 in 5 and 1 in 3. So out of the first 10, somewhere between 2, 3, or 4 people are still going to say yes to this. I can guarantee it. If they don't, I'll pay you £250. Right? I'm that confident. But what's going to happen is the first 8 are going to say no.

Mm-hmm.

It's going to be the last 2 annoying buggers who are going to say yes. Okay, because clients are like buses, basically.

Yeah. Yeah.

So you've got to go through that painful process over the next 4 to 6 weeks pitching 10 to 20 people at your new consultation rate. You'll get more rejection, more nos, but we've just established you can have a third of the clients and still make the same money from the consultations. Okay?

Yes.

And at that price, let's say, for example, if you're doing I don't know, 5 consultations a month. Okay, so we'll take that. Let's just get rid of that for a second. So we're doing 5 consultations at £120 a month— sorry, £120 each. So per month— can't write now. Where it all goes horribly wrong. There we go. So for each month, 5 consultations, £120. So that equals £600 a month worth of revenue just from consultations. Now already, so that's 5 hours of your time plus all the meandering travel and writing reports and things like that. You're getting paid a bit more for it, but that's half your revenue that you're already making each month just in consultations alone.

Yeah.

Okay, so I would suggest you could do nothing different but sell your consultations for £120 and get to £2K.

Okay.

Right?

Mm-hmm.

How do you feel about that so far?

I don't know. Maybe I just don't see that many people that need my help, or I don't know.

How many consultations did you do, say, in August?

I did one ongoing client, so she booked 6 sessions with me, but that was from a consultation, and I probably did 3 other consultations.

Okay, so 4 consultations then, basically, but one was from an existing client, really?

Yeah.

Okay, so you're not far off getting 5 there. And again, it might just be a matter of— I don't want to go right the way through your sort of marketing funnel necessarily. 'Cause it's one of those things I talk about, like the— I compare businesses to like a rattly old Fiat 500 engine. Like at the moment, your pricing and the way you've designed your products is a bit broken. So we've got to fix that first.

Uh-huh.

So that when we then add rocket fuel, i.e., marketing, into that engine, now it's finely tuned. It's now a rocket engine. Your business is just going to explode. But we've got to get you confidently selling Your product, same product for more, basically.

Yeah.

First. So, but even if we had 4 clients there who paid £120 for that initial consultation, that would have been originally about £180 worth of revenue. Under my new pricing structure, you've got £480 worth of revenue, 3 times, close to 4 times the revenue.

Yeah.

Yeah. So it's, you know, that will make a big difference to you. You'd take an extra £400 a month, wouldn't you?

Yeah, I wouldn't turn it down.

Right, so the second part of the question you asked was about how do I sell it? Like, I'm not very confident about selling it. So talk to me a bit about that, that sort of what's going on.

I mean, I'm quite good at talking to people and things like that. People always say I'm, you know, approachable and everything, but it's just, I guess it is the nos. Like, sometimes I have been turned down because of my prices, and if you're saying they're already cheap, that's kind of what then goes, oh, well, if I'm already cheap and people are turning me down. But yeah, it's just to be able to confidently say that, yeah, these are my prices. This is take it or leave it kind of thing.

So you can— first of all, you can do it without even saying take it or leave it. It's just these are my prices. That's, you know, I'm good at what I do. I'm an expert. If you want to get great results, like, you know, we work together. This is the package I'm recommending for you. So you've got to say it with some level of authority.

Uh-huh.

But there was one thing which she said there which was about, oh, people are already saying it's too expensive at the existing price, so, you know, if I put it up, are even more people gonna say no? Well, again, this is about evidence. Like, if I were to say to you, well, how do you know people are gonna say— you know, how do you know people aren't gonna say yes at £120? You don't know because you haven't pitched it at £120. That's why I'm challenging you Rather than— what you've done is you've created a story for yourself, you've gone out to find evidence, and that evidence looks like people currently saying no at your existing prices.

Yeah.

You've got no evidence for it at £120, so actually you're kind of like— that story and that belief you created for yourself isn't true.

Yeah.

Fair enough if you pitch 20 people at £120 and they all say no, I'd eat my words and I'd give you some cash. I mean that genuinely, but I know that there is a market out there for people, for experts like you, for selling consultations at £120. So I'm confident.

Okay.

So what happens during the sales conversation then? So in that 15-minute call, you've talked about, you know, your business and their dog and the challenges they're having, and you get to that point of you pitch them the consultation. So imagine we're now pitching it at £120. And that person says, oh gosh, that's expensive. What do you normally find yourself saying?

Uh, I can see— I can hear you now going, what are you gonna say? Um, I'd probably go, let's look into, uh, like a course or a program that we can put onto, and if ever so many sessions are booked, we can look into a discount or something.

Okay, we're just talking about at the moment because again We're not selling them the package yet. We're going to do the consultation.

Oh, right. Okay.

Yeah. And then from the consultation, that's the point where you'll upsell them a package of, you know, a program of training sessions afterwards. So we're just, just for now, we're just focusing on the £120 consultation.

To be fair, the people that have said no so far have just gone, okay, but you've, you've got my details. So if you do struggle later on, like, you can always message me, like, and inquire again. So I have kind of accepted that, you know, this is my price at the moment, but I think with the £120, yeah, I'd be going, I know it's slightly expensive, I'm sorry.

Okay, so you'd be a bit apologetic. Okay, right. So is it okay to reflect something back to you?

Yes, of course.

So most people, when they sell, it's normally a reflection of their own value systems. So if £120 was expensive. If you were to go and buy something for £120, that might feel expensive to you.

Yeah.

So what's happening is you're attaching emotionally to the sale based on your own value system.

Got ya.

I find it too expensive, therefore other people will find it too expensive. So you've got to find a way, and it's not easy, but you've got to find a way to kind of detach from that emotional side of, you know, that value system there. And you can, it can be expensive over here, but your business to get to £2K a month needs you to be rock solid And be like, no, £120 is a bargain.

Yeah.

Like, it's— this is the best thing for you and your dog. Like, that's why I'm recommending the consultation. If I didn't think I could help you, I wouldn't be recommending my consultation. But if we— if you want to work with me and start to listen to the tonality which I'm using here as well, if you want to work with me and you want your dog to stop barking at the postman, Let's book the consultation. When can you do it?

Yeah. It's all about, you want this, you want your dog to stop doing this. I'm the person that can give it to you. Let's go.

Yeah, it's, it's much more— so don't forget, you're the expert. Your clients need you more than you need them. Okay, because what's, what's also happening there is if you're, if you're attached to that, that yes and the no, because You need that £45 from the consultation because you need to pay your rent and you need to put food on your table. Now all of a sudden you're not operating in your client's best interests.

Yes.

It's all about Rachel and paying for Rachel's life. So that's one of the best things about— if you can get control of the pricing side of things and charge a bit more, it gives you a bit of extra flexibility and freedom to like It's all of a sudden you're making more money, so it's no longer about you. It's just like you can pick and choose who you work with.

Yeah.

Gives you more time to offer a better quality product, etc., etc. So, um, so let's think about sort of some of the objections you might get. So they might just turn around, flat blunt, go, that's expensive.

Okay.

The best weapon in your armoury when you get that objection, because it's never about price, never about price, right? The best question you can ask somebody is What do you mean? And they might say something like, oh, you know, I've noticed Dave down the road charges like £2 for his consultation. It's— that's like super— yeah, but Dave's not qualified with the IMDT. Dave's doing this as a side hustle. Actually, have you seen the reviews on his website?

Yeah.

Go and spend 2 quid with Dave, but Dave doesn't know what he's doing. Okay, or you can come and spend £120 with somebody who knows exactly what they're doing. And actually, I'll tell you what, if we get to the end of the consultation and I've give you the report and you actually don't feel you've had value for money out of that process, I'll just refund you the money. And you can then go and take that money and spend it with Dave if you want to. So what we've done is it's something called a risk reversal, or we're kind of de-risking it for them. So you— what it does is it focuses them on whether they want the product or not.

Right.

So they've got nowhere to go now. They're kind of like, oh, well, she's just told me she's going to give me the money back if it's Shit. So it's kind of a no-brainer. Why wouldn't they spend £120 with you? That makes sense.

Yeah.

Normally what will happen is if they're just not bought into you or not bought into the process, and that's absolutely fine, they'll just walk away anyway despite the fact you've just said, I'll give you your money back if you don't get it.

Yeah.

So it's, you know, so think about like what sort of questions you could ask somebody to kind of loop them back around on, you know, like, so that one which is What do you mean? And they'll start giving you a whole load of excuses. Well, great. If you're worried about investing £120, totally get it. It's a lot of money. You know, they might want to go and speak to the husband or wife or partner or whatever, and that's, that's cool too. But just, you know, let me talk about what— so what's going to happen with Fido then if your husband says, no, we're not spending £120 and he's still barking at the postman?

Yeah.

You're going to moan about the dog barking at the postman. What are you going to do then? So you can start to kind of get them focused on the problem again.

Yes.

And it becomes not about the price. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Have you got any questions for me at this point?

Um, none so far. I don't think so, no.

So what are you gonna say? So if— so let's say, for example, I was a client and I've just said to you, oh God, and you've just pitched me the £120 consultation, and I say, oh, Rachel, It's a bit more expensive than I was thinking. What are you gonna say to me?

Um, what do you mean?

Great question.

And also just maybe it can always be like, you know, if, if it's not right right now this month, I'm always available next month. Like, you know— no? Okay, okay.

So again, in that, in that, because otherwise what's happening is you're, you're kind of letting them off the hook.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I see what you mean straight away.

You, you, when you're buying stuff, like to be let off the hook.

Yeah.

Yeah, but in this instance, because they've got a dog which has a problem, challenge, needs help, an issue which needs help with, some kind of anxiety or problem, and you know you can help them, you've got to get them refocused on the problem. You say, what do you mean? Okay, well, actually, I don't, I don't have the money, or it's more, more money than I was thinking it was. Well, That's great, but obviously, like, if we were to take money out of the picture—

Mm-hmm.

This is another way of handling that objection. If we take money out of the picture, what do you— do you understand the process of the consultation? Do you think it's going to be helpful? And they'll probably go, yeah, it sounds fantastic. Great. So you told me at the start of the consultation that, like, you get really anxious at quarter past 9 every morning because you can hear the footsteps of the postman and you know the dog's going to go absolutely mental and you have this race to get there before he shreds all the letters. Every morning. We can— I need to assess the situation, which is what that consultation is about, and I can start to give you a bit of a plan, a strategy for you taking control of that and training the dog to stop it. We can also look at further training sessions, but this is the start of the process to stop Fido from tearing the post up and barking every, you know, every morning at quarter past 9.

Mm-hmm.

Oh yeah, when you say it like that.

Yeah.

It's very different to kind of either letting people off the hook or feeling like you've got to justify yourself.

Yeah, I think that's it. I think that's it, actually. Yeah, like I have to justify my prices. Like, you know, I charge this much because I do this, this, this, this, and this and this. And then sometimes if I feel like it's too much, I then just add something else on. So I do this, this, this, this, this, and this. Yeah. So yeah.

You know, and then another way is just— you mentioned it before. I mean, it's £120, so I would hope that most people could afford that. If they can't afford £120, they're going to struggle to pay for an ongoing series of training sessions. You know, they might be more appropriate if the challenge with the dog isn't big enough to come into the group workshops or something like that. But, you know, you could also say to them, well, listen, if it's literally the fact you want to do this but you don't have £120, you know, why don't we split it down into 2 payments? Could you do £60 now and then £60 on the day or the day before? Ideally, for consultations, you want payment in advance.

Yes. In full.

Because you don't want no-shows and things like that happening. It gets people committed. So you could potentially split it up into a couple of payments if you wanted to.

Okay.

You know, or you could say to them, well, listen, if this is going to be, you know, it might be that it's middle of the month, they're running a bit short. Well, how about let's book the session in today so that that's in the diary. I'll send you the invoice, but you pay on payday.

Okay. Yeah.

But again, what's happening is you're giving them like really clear instructions on what the next steps are in your process.

Yes.

Okay?

Yeah.

So I've given you a little like sales masterclass, like 101, in about the space of about 5 or 10 minutes there. What's gonna happen is you'll then sit the consultation, and then I'm gonna go back to my terrible diagram again.

Yeah.

Everybody can read the words on it. So then we're kind of gonna get into the territory of the packages. Okay? So we've done the consultation. Next stage, at the end of the consultation or after the consultation, we'll then sell them a package. Now, actually do the consultation and Fido's, you know, post-shredding antics are like worse than you thought. And it's gonna— he's a bit of an old dog anyway. So it's gonna take him a while to teach him, you know, how to behave when the postman starts walking down the drive and things like that. So, but the packages which you want to be selling are It's what I call the 1, 2, or 3 pack. So silver, gold, or platinum, you know, and it depends on the severity of the issue. But Fido, you reckon could be fixed if you had a weekly training session for 2 or 3 months. You reckon you could have it licked?

Mm-hmm.

Okay, but what you sell them is not £200 a month or £45 a session or whatever it looks like. You sell them a 3-month program. that by the end of it, we'll have Fido, you know, sitting quietly, looking up at the owner, you know, every time the postman comes along, because we've got it solved. You know, dad's happy. Fur Baby's dad is happy because there's no barking, or, you know, his post is in one piece. So we sell them a package, a 3-month package, that's £600. Okay?

Yeah.

It's one training session a week for 12 weeks. At the end of it, Fido's gonna be good as gold. And hey presto, maybe we'll fix a couple of other issues along the way as well as a Brucey bonus. Okay, but we get them focused on one specific problem. So we start to then sell packages at £600. Now again, it might be that it's a 3-month program. So you could say, well, it's £200 a month for 3 months. So you can split it down, but you're selling them a specific package with specific outcomes and results. Okay, and obviously if you then did twice a week or 3 times a week, if the issue was more severe, which it might be in some cases, you know, separation anxiety, for example, that's just absolutely like, you know, destroying the dog. That could be like a 2-pack or 3-pack. So 2 or 3 sessions a week until the problem's resolved. And that could be as much as £1,200 or even £1,800. And again, people will hear those big numbers and go, oh my gosh, that's expensive, and this, that, and the other. But imagine this scenario where you're doing like 4 or 5 consultations a month. So you're getting a few hundred pounds in. And you've got maybe 1 or 2 or 3 clients on just your 1 or 2 pack already, but then every now and then a client drops in and says, yeah, you know what, I can see there's a whole load of issues here. We want you to resolve all of them. We'll go for your 3-pack, and it's £1,800.

Mm-hmm.

Okay, your goal was £2,000. You could sell 1 consultation a month and 1 Platinum package, and you've hit your goal. That's 1 client a month.

Yeah.

Okay, but it takes time for you to gradually, you know, eke up and start to sell bigger packages for more money and things like that. So I said take the consultations, for example. We've agreed, you and I've agreed, you're going to start selling those at £120 each.

Yep.

Okay, so you're going to take the prices off your website for now because we're going to be practicing your prices. Super important because one of the challenges you'll face is you'll set your pitch at £120 £120, and somebody will say, oh, but I saw it on your website, it's £45.

Yeah.

Take the price— whilst we're testing prices, take your prices off your website. Okay, really important. Next 10 to 20 people, pitch it at £120. When you've sold like 3, 4, 5 of them, I want you to consider putting it up to £150.

Okay.

When you've sold 3, 4, 5 of them at £150, start thinking about putting it up to £180. So we're gradually gonna, as your confidence grows, we'll gradually increment that price and you'll sell them for more and more.

Well, only one question with regards to quite a lot of people get— I get recommended from people that I've helped. So they go, oh, so you helped my friend and they've recommended me to you. If I'm then starting increasing my prices every 4 to 5 and they'll go, well, you sold it to thingy for £120. Now why am I £150?

Just say, you know, I'm full to capacity. I'm good at what I do. You know, my coach has told me to put my prices up.

All right. Okay.

It doesn't matter. Don't feel you've got to justify it. Just make it matter of fact. Just say, yeah. Or if you were worried about it, you could just, you could just say, do you know what, actually, yeah, I'll honour Jane's price. If that's what Jane told you it was, I'm happy to honour that.

Okay.

You know, so then there's no problem with that. You don't lose any face either by, you know, you probably get more goodwill by kind of just saying, yeah, okay, I'll go for that one. I mean, you're not going to be putting your prices up every 5 minutes. It's probably going to be like every 4 to 6 weeks. You'll get, as your confidence builds and you pitch for, you know, 10 to 20 people over 4 to 6 weeks, confidence builds, we sell 4 or 5, then I'll put my price up. So it's not like you'd be changing every day. It's going to gradually increment sort of on a monthly, bimonthly basis.

Okay.

I would focus, to make it— make life easy for yourself, I would focus just on the pricing for the consultation initially.

Okay.

Don't worry too much about the packages because you'll sell some packages anyway. But you can use similar techniques as you learn through applying it to the consultations. You'll start to learn the techniques which you can then apply to your packages as well.

Yes.

But I'll leave you my parting words with For you will be throughout your sales process, assume a position of leadership. Don't let the client say to you, oh well, I only want to book one session. If you're sat there and little Fido's like tearing the post up and you're like, that, that dog needs 4 sessions, you've got to sell that client 4 sessions or be prepared to walk away.

Okay.

Because if you're selling them one session, it's to satisfy your own needs to make money.

Yes.

And at all times you need to be operating with the dog and the owner as well, but within the dog's best interests.

Yeah.

And clients will try everything they possibly can to try and tell you what they think they need. And a lot of the time it's wrong. And you've kind of got to just ignore that and say, no, no, I'm really sorry, Mrs. Smith, but from what I've seen, what you— what we discussed in your initial assessment and what I've seen in the consultation. We need at least 8 sessions because it's quite a severe problem.

Mm-hmm.

You know, that is going to be close to £400, but by the end of it, I can't guarantee anything, but I'm pretty confident based on what I've seen, the dogs I've worked with in the past, that we can resolve that issue. You know, but it's 8 sessions over 8 weeks, so we can split that down into 2 payments if you want to.

Okay.

Oh, but can't we just try 4 and see how it goes? No, no, I think you're missing the point here. It's 8 sessions. That's what he needs.

Yeah. Yeah. So it can almost be like, you know, it's 8 sessions and then we can see at the end of it where we are.

Yeah.

You know, if he still needs more, if it's even more behavioral, or if we've completed what we're after. But 8 sessions is the minimum that this dog needs kind of thing. Yeah.

And you're— you've also got to get into the habit of with your walking clients, unfortunately, are kind of taking the mickey a little bit because you're doing training with them whilst you're out on the walks.

Yeah.

They're not really paying for that, not at those prices anyway. So I would consider having a training walk price which is close to double your normal walk price.

Right, okay.

Okay, so normal walk, just take them out, You know, give them a good stretch of the legs and come back. No training. Training walk is now double the price of what it was last week.

Yeah, because I find that a bit like my dog walking clients, because it was just started up, you know, as, as a kind of a way to learn as well about dogs' behavior, different dogs and everything like that, learning from each individual. But now I find a lot of the dog walks does take up a lot of my day, and then I've got to do all my training elements. in an evening because I've booked up my day for, you know, dog walking. So, um, yeah, I might have to look at prices of dog walks.

Definitely. And, and it might be, you know, so, um, well, have a think about it and you can always kind of fire back to me in the group, either in Pet Professional Network or in Confidently Charge More group, um, you know, once you've had a chance to kind of Process today's session, which hopefully has been enjoyable. Yes, it has. You know, and keep us posted with your progress as well. Share your wins. So if you do go out and sell a consultation for 3 times the price, let everybody know. Talk about it and share that with us. I'd really appreciate it.

I will do. Cool.

Right, we're there. We're at the end of it. We did go over a little bit, I'm afraid, so we're a bit beyond 5 o'clock. But if you're watching this and you want a bit of help in in terms of fixing your pet professional business, or any business for that matter that involves some kind of a service which you want to productize, or involves clients and customers that maybe are pulling you around rather than you being able to make it work for yourself better. If you want to increase your turnover, then drop me a line. We're always looking for guests for Fix Your Business. And obviously what we'll also do is we will share Rachel's details, so you can go and check out Rachel's Rambles. You're on Facebook, aren't you? You've got a Facebook page, you've got Instagram, and also we'll share the website address as well. So if anybody's down in Essex and wants some help with their dog, obviously you can go and speak to Rachel too. Rachel, hopefully that was enjoyable. It's been a real pleasure.

Yeah, an eye-opener. You know, like I said before, I've never owned a business, so actually talking to somebody that, you know, knows how businesses work and knows how to make money and, you know, make it the most successful successful business you can. Because I think that's the goal at the end of the day. I want my business to be successful. You know, I don't just want to, 5 years' time, go, that was the worst experience of my life. So yeah, so it's been really interesting. Really interesting.

Awesome. I'm pleased to hear it. And what will happen is you're going to get a bug for this when you hit £2,000. And I say when, not if, but when you hit £2,000 a month in terms of turnover, you'll be like, I want more. How do I get more? And it will keep on escalating from there. But you'll have, if you apply some of the principles you've learned today, You'll have everything you need to go up to 3K, 4K, 5K, and beyond.

Okay.

Ace.

Thank you, Rachel. Thank you so much.